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“Decolonial Love” – Politicising Your Hormones

If you’re one of those people who worry about discriminating against others by exhaling carbon dioxide, with the aid of intersectional feminism you can reach a whole new level of devotion: you can now fight oppression by politicising your romantic relationships.

All you have to do is rewire your brain in order to only experience attraction towards individuals in social categories classed as underprivileged. Sounds easy, right…? Forget the fact that this has no discernible purpose under the Sun – your only goal in life should be the application of feminist principles in every little thing you do, say or even experience internally (while reassuring yourself that feminism is not actually a cult).

If you need to alter your brain chemistry and subconscious mind in order to manipulate your attraction criteria, so be it. Your hormones are supremacist.

During his speech, Diaz introduced the concept of decolonial love with an “apocalyptic proclamation”: “We’re never gonna get anywhere as long as our economies of attraction continue to resemble more or less the economies of attraction of white supremacy.”

In other words, if we cannot change the thinking around who and how we love, as a society, we’ll stay stuck in the ideology of colonialism.

Making our love decolonial is a necessary step to a completely decolonial self, because if we don’t let go of our privileges and closely examine how the forces of oppressionplay out in our love lives, we are powering the existing injustices of the world.

And the existing forces of oppression for decolonial lovers to fight are numerous: patriarchy, heterosexism, skinny worship, classism, ableism, and what Diaz aptly calls “pigmentation politics.”

In other words, by feeling sexually, emotionally, intellectually attracted to people who are considered privileged – white, heterosexual, “cisgender” etc – we are contributing to the perpetuation of injustice against other categories. As if somehow the community – or the world at large – owned each one of us down to the bone marrow, holding us accountable for decisions regarding our personal happiness, which have no impact on others. You can’t get more fanatically socialist than that.

These people must live and breath oppression theories every second of their day; they are so high on their own fumes they don’t realise how much these fantasies of micromanaging each individual are straying from human nature.

In former communist countries, each citizen was expected to be completely subjugated to the ideology of the party; to be immersed in it and energised by it. No intrinsic value was to be held in higher regard and no other loyalty was to be prioritised – not even to family members. As such, even small choices made daily were filtered through what the party wanted from an ideal citizen. The same mentality is shared by this so-called social justice crowd.

Your personal happiness means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Hail the matriarchy; everything for the cause! Your entire life should be a shining example of a devoted, practicing feminist – and nothing else.

Some people think it means reserving our love and respect only for people of color (POC) or queer (LGBTQIA+) folks — or especially queer folks of color. That is not the case, as only loving any group of people can fall into exotification or fethishization.

All throughout, the author remains concerned only with the object of the debate, namely those who are more worthy of love than others – never with those she is asking to rewire their hormonal drive in some weird bid to exclude the “privileged” from their desires, which is extremely racist, by the way. What is this supposed to achieve, again? Who would this help and how? The “especially” points out that there is a rank of desirability based on how many oppression badges someone can collect. And the warning follows closely – love them very much, but not too much, as too much would also be insulting.

Since the LGBT community is mentioned, may I ask how a gay person only loving gay people is guilty of exotification or fetishisation? I imagine she would not demand that straight folks reserve their romantic interest for queer folks or vice-versa. So this fetishisation caper doesn’t make any sense between categories which do not interact on a romantic level.

It appears that a significant swathe of the addressees of this moralising piece must be the ones singled out as less lovable – white, heterosexual, “cis” people.

The concept of love as decolonial is not opposed to loving someone deemed desirable by society (in other words, an individual who is able-bodied, conventionally attractive, wealthy financially and socially, and/or comes from a first world country).

The issue is when we are only attracted to those kinds of people and not open to making a romantic or emotional connection with others.

Can I also ask why are anyone’s preferences an issue stretching farther than their private lives ? Whose business is it exactly? Where a person comes from matters for very logical reasons, in terms of the culture they were brought up in. There could be major discrepancies based on that.

I can’t believe I even have to say this, but people don’t actively choose whom they are attracted to. It’s an instinct. What they do with that is a whole different matter – yet that does not alter their initial drive and intrinsic selection criteria.

Just as no one actively chooses to be gay or straight. In fact, LGBT activism is based on the idea of following one’s natural inclinations in terms of attraction, while resisting societal pressures to live conventionally. Whether or not they see themselves as revolutionaries defying the status quo, these lefties are still trying to pressure others regarding a very personal matter. There are trying to set moral norms in an area which needs no intervention or regulation.

Anyhow, the disclaimer was a blatant lie, as you can read below.

The first step to addressing the colonial mindset is awareness. Awareness is key to retraining our reflexes and stopping habits in their tracks.

When I first came to the US, I had a crush on every blond-haired, blue-eyed boy in my class. In my way of thinking, those were the characteristics of a good person. Clearly, I had been exposed to some white supremacy in my early years in China. But when I realized what was at work that magnetized me — and many others — to whiteness, I was no longer so helplessly attracted to those traits.

While questioning what we take for granted can be hard work, it is made exponentially easier if we have practice.

Therefore, this whole movement is not concerned with the inclusion of certain categories but the explicit exclusion of others. Or rather, the exclusion of a specific one, I should say.

Due to this presentation, an individual who “likes Asian women” may think of that as a “preference,” when in reality, it’s a learned form of prejudice that’s based on fetishizing an entire group of people. The same can be said if you rule out an entire race as unattractive or unsuitable. In both cases,it is the stereotype that is deciding, not you.

Excuse me…? What was it you were saying about white people and making a conscious, successful effort to stop being attracted to them, because of colonialism? Isn’t that ruling out a race as unsuitable? Isn’t that letting the stereotype decide? Incredible double-think.

For example: If we are less emotionally invested in our partners, we may end up with the upper hand in the relationship while the other person feels powerless.

There are ways to de-escalate the commitment level without making the other person feel disrespected or powerless. If you communicate your level of commitment clearly, and the other person is still willing to engage in a relationship based on that knowledge, then neither person is taken advantage of.

Treating romantic relationships as pure power dynamics is par for the course with feminism, which rejects the idea of actual love. That’s why, even though “investing emotionally” was involved, the author shies away from the word “love” and uses less intense ones which make the situation seem less personal.

Even in equally committed relationships, it is good to check in about how empowered and respected you feel by your partner and vice versa.

Why not, check in regularly, to verify both parties are still satisfied with the arrangement. Fill out an “equal partner” satisfaction form every month and rate the empowerment you are experiencing.

Engage your decolonial muscles. Build them up. Because we want it to be a fair fight between the reflexes we have inherited and the ones we have chosen for ourselves.

Again – to what avail would this “fight” take place, if not the complete submission to SJW principles, against one’s own natural inclinations?

For the time being, it seems producing these grand ideas vigorously engages people’s decolonial muscles.